Weather in your calendar

Add the following feed to your MS Outlook 2007 Calendar and get the daily Klerksdorp weather as an item in your calendar (ICAL via www.wunderground.com):

http://ical.wunderground.com/auto/ical/global/stations/68347.ics?units=metric

OUTLOOK > Tools > Account Settings > Internet Calendars

www.wunderground.com if you want to add other cities or towns.

Maybe when Steve Jobs dies I’ll buy an iPhone...

Version 2.0 of the iPhone is available in South Africa and finally has push email on MS Exchange, 3G and GPS (things that version 1.0 should probably have had in the first place).

I have an iPod Touch and I sooooo wanted to buy an iPhone, but thanks to the long wait I came to my senses.

The lack of a hardware keyboard is one of the biggest considerations. The multi-touch features of the iPhone are great but typing on a virtual keyboard is still very restrictive especially with that stupid Apple predictive text input-thing (that you cannot disable).

In general the iPhone is also much too restrictive:

• One of the most basic functions of a smart phone, cut-and-paste, is not supported (what’s up with that?).
• Multi-tasking, it can only run one application at a time.
• A measly 2MP camera with no video recording, WTF?
• No MMS support (nobody actually use MMS, I know).
• 16GB of space is good for now, but where do I put my SD-card? - You can’t, no expandable memory options.
• Need to replace the battery? Send it to Apple because you cannot change it yourself!
• Bluetooth only works for headsets.
• GPS does not give turn-by-turn directions; it only gives you Google Maps with GPS.
• All my other cellphones could act as a modem to connect my laptop to wireless internet, not with the iPhone.
• Want to access your 16GB of space via USB as a mass storage device, forget about it! Use iTunes and sync only the stuff Apple wants you to sync.

Apple decides what applications can and cannot be developed. Therefore you will probably never see VoIP applications (like FRING) or even Podcast Aggregators for the iPhone.

According to general reports the battery life sucks and only gets better when you disable most of the connectivity features (3G, wi-fi, Bluetooth, etc). Reports of the plastic back-bezels cracking are also rampant.

My biggest frustration with Apple was their lack of support in South Africa. With my iPod Touch, Contacting Apple support through the Apple UK support site is an exercise in futility. I am still (after about a year) unable to download basic applications like the Google App or the Flixster Movie App, not to mention Super Monkey Ball (not available in the South African Store).

The Podcast section of the iTunes Store is also blocked for South Africa and nobody knows when Music, Movies and TV Series will be available (if ever).

Downloading a 200MB update every other week is not something I want to spend my precious 3GB bandwidth-cap on (my PC’s, Media Center, xBox and Wii already competes for it).

Although ICASA regulations prohibit a phone from being locked to a particular network, apparently the iPhone 3G needs a special (smaller) SIM card that only Vodacom supplies.

I know you can crack the phone and force it to do what you want it to do, but Jailbreaking the phone every time there is a new update is too much of a hassle for me.

By far the best feature of the iPhone / iPod Touch is its web browser, but even this is limited with no support for Flash or JAVA. Thanks to my iPod Touch over Wi-Fi, all the mobile Google Web Apps and my HTC cellphone I’ll be able to live without it...

If I could upgrade now I would probably get one, but that’s not an option until 2010. Yes, it is a "revolutionary phone, a widescreen iPod, and a breakthrough Internet device", but all things considered I will not pay R7569 for an cellphone – Not even the Jesus Phone!

Enough said.